FREEDOM with honesty, justice, and courage..
COMPASSION with dignity, humour, and tolerance..
KNOWLEDGE with effort, perseverance and sharing..
LOVE with peace and harmony towards all
LIFE ON EARTH.
A science-based international free press humanitarian organization...
created in 1972.. human4us2.blogspot.com...
If you want to know what I drink during the day, here is my recipe for a Green power smoothie.
1. One cheap and small machine mixer with the power to crush ice. Throw into the mixer jug...
2. One Banana.
3. One Apple.
4. Three hand fulls of baby Spinach leaves.
5. One hand full of chopped Cabbage leaves.
6. One glass of pure Blueberry juice or whatever pure juice you like.
7, One Kiwi
8. Start slow and then mix on high speed until smooth and Green.
9. If you can, try not to drink it all at once, save some for later.
10. Feel the power of the Green curse through your veins and have a great day!
Cell biologists discover crucial ‘traffic regulator’ in neurons Cell biologists led by Utrecht University’s Professor Casper Hoogenraad have discovered the protein that may be the crucial traffic regulator for the transport of vital molecules inside nerve cells. When this traffic regulator is removed, the flow of traffic comes to a halt.
The resulting ‘traffic jams’ are reported to play a key role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s disease. The discovery of this traffic regulator may therefore be crucial for a better understanding of the development of neural disorders. The results of their research were published in the scientific journal Neuron on Wednesday 19 April.
Stephen Ritz developed a curriculum for indoor gardening that changed a school in the South Bronx.
(Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Have you ever been in a position to change the world, or at least
your small slice of it? Did you do it? Did you take the risks that would
make a difference in the lives of others? If something held you back —
unfavorable odds, fear of failure, lack of courage or something else —
then Stephen Ritz's "The Power of a Plant" is for you.
The book is Ritz's story of how a school teacher used an
infectious spirit of optimism to overcome professional setbacks and
personal heartbreak to make a difference in the lives of children in the
South Bronx in New York City. He did that by teaching them to plant
seeds and showing them how seeds develop into healthy food. And how that
healthy food can lead to better health, better grades and hope for a
productive future.
Ritz, a native of the Bronx, stumbled into teaching in the
borough nearly 30 years ago. He was initially placed in a high school of
mainly Latino and Afro-Caribbean students where the crime rate was high
and the graduation rate was just 17 percent. Once there, he discovered
he had a knack for connecting and engaging with these students,
especially the ones who seemed hardest to reach.
At first, he used sometimes unorthodox tactics to do that. Then,
purely by accident, came a defining moment. He received a package of
flower bulbs he mistakenly thought were onions. Afraid they might become
missiles in a classroom brawl, he hid them behind a radiator and forgot
about them.
Six weeks later, an enraged girl went after a boy who had gotten
on her nerves once too often. As the scene unfolded, Ritz rushed toward
them to break up what he afraid was about to become a disaster. He saw
the boy reach toward the radiator and thought he might have stashed a
weapon there. To his amazement, the boy suddenly pulled out a bouquet of
yellow flowers and thrust them towards the girl as a peace offering.
Stunned, Ritz watched what happened next. The boys started giving
flowers to the girls, the girls wanted to take flowers home to their
mothers and peace was restored.
The forgotten bulbs were actually daffodils. The steam from the
radiator had forced them into bloom. The dramatic episode was an
epiphany for Ritz. He realized that if there was power in plants to stop
a classroom fight, there must be power in plants to transform lives and
communities. Initially, he didn't know how to do that. He didn't have a
grand plan. In fact, he readily admits, he didn't have any plan. But he
had purpose, passion and hope.
An idea in bloom
The vertical gardens Stephen Ritz developed in an abandoned
school library have been replicated in the U.S. Botanic Gardens. (Photo:
Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
He turned the moment into a green curriculum, a movement that
would change his life and the lives of countless others. He incorporated
vegetable gardens into sections of the South Bronx, on school grounds
and on top of a building, organized the Green Teens, and then founded
the Green Bronx Machine,
a federally registered and approved nonprofit organization with
501(c)(3) status that seeks to be an engine of community change by fully
integrating indoor vegetable gardening and green curriculum into a
K-12+ model. This model is being used in 5,000 schools across the United
States and in Canada, Dubai and other countries.
Ritz's students now have near-perfect attendance and graduation
rates, they have significantly raised their passing rates on state exams
and he has helped create 2,200 local jobs by changing mindsets about
food, wellness and obesity in the middle of the largest tract of public
housing in the South Bronx.
His efforts, which he has largely self-funded, have led to numerous awards. These include being a top 10 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize
and being named one of NPR's 50 Greatest Teachers. He has been invited
to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis, presented at the White House three
separate times and given a TEDx Talk when he was so weak recovering from
surgery that he was advised to delay it. He went on stage anyway
because he didn't want to disappoint his kids. The talk has been viewed
more than 1 million times; you can see it here:
He spoke with Mother Nature Network from his indoor demonstration
classroom, the National Health Wellness and Learning Center, in the
South Bronx's Community School 55. Officially a full-time volunteer, he
is executive director of the center and works with the principal and
administration to mentor teachers. He also teaches daily and coordinates
after-school and summer programming.
The garden, composed of vertical towers in a formerly
under-utilized library in a building that's more than 100 years old, has been replicated in the U.S. Botanic
Garden. He discusses how his green curriculum gives a voice to children
who have never had a voice, and how it has changed attitudes about
growing, cooking, eating and sharing healthy food in the poorest
congressional district in the country, in the least healthy county in
New York and in one of the poorest performing school districts in New
York City. It's a story about how his methods can unleash the power of a
plant in your school district.
MNN: You have a passion to use plants and food to change
the educational system and, seemingly against all odds, an unflinching
belief in your ability to do that. Where did that come from? Stephen Ritz: It's definitely a combination of
passion, purpose and hope. I refer to myself as a CEO, Chief Eternal
Optimist and Chief Excitement Officer of Bronx County. In absolutely the
most unforgiving places, the most amazing things are absolutely
possible. I grew up inspired by the people who were around me. It was a
world where we grew up loving people and using things. Somewhere along
the way, we have gone to loving things and using people. But if we live
simply, others will simply live, and that is what this movement is all
about.
So, I believe that behind every successful person, there is a
role model. A teacher. A mentor. Someone who said, "Do this, don't give
up, try this, I believe in you." Remarkably for me, that was my parents
and my grandparents and, along the way, a couple of teachers who showed
me some love at the least likely time. Similarly, I try to do that every
day. I meet the kids on the steps of the school and shake their hands
and welcome them in and try and turn that frown upside-down. If I can
pull air into my lungs and extend my head toward the sun just like a
plant, so can they. That's the beauty of showing up, growing up and
making epic happen — moving children from impossible to I'm possible,
each and every day.
Ritz seeks to be a mentor and role model to his students. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
You have overcome personal struggles and devastating losses as well as jealousy from other educators. What has sustained you? What sustains me is that I am here, and I am not going anywhere.
More often than not, the answers to the world's most difficult problems
are right in front of us. If we will all just take a little bit of
ownership, we will get to "Yes!" That's what the world should be about.
It should not be us versus them. It should be how do we get to "Yes!"
and leave this place a little bit better than we found it.
In a lot of ways, the system is rigged. Whether by design or by
default, that's a wholly separate conversation. That's not the
conversation I want to have. The conversation I want to have is what can
we do today, minute by minute, moment by moment that will make us and
our lives better, more prosperous, more inclusive and make us want to do
things that will leave the planet better. That's imminently doable.
Understanding our place in the food chain and the relationships around
us and how we can add value to others' lives is, to me, what I was put
on this Earth to do. So many people have added value to my life that I
forever just want to pay that forward and add value to theirs, mindful
that I certainly believe that the greatest natural resource in this
entire world is the untapped potential residing in marginalized
communities.
What we have here is outrageous. Every day I am looking at the
next Barack Obama, Sonya Sotomayor, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Carmen Farina
(New York City Schools chancellor), Ruben Diaz Jr. (Bronx borough
president), Gustavo Rivera (a New York state senator), Michael Blake (a
New York state assemblyman) or Vanessa Gibson (a New York City Council
member), children who will change the trajectory of their lives and
communities. That, to me, is so inspiring. How do we create pathways for
success? It's the same thing in Africa. The same thing in South
America. The same thing in the Middle East. The same thing everywhere I
go. How do we help those who have become apart from to becoming a part
of in ways that benefit the world?
Is that why you have so much compassion for at-risk children, which comes across so strongly in your book? I am one of them! No one tells you that you are going to grow up
and be separate and unequal. No one grows up and tells you, "Hey, you
know, the system isn’t fair." But sooner or later you have eyes, and you
see. You have ears, and you listen. Now, you can be angry and jaded, or
you can do something. But the time to do nothing is never. Every day is
the opportunity to do something. In a world where we tell people they
are talented and gifted, let's see [what would happen] if we just told
them there are those who work harder. So, next year you could be in a
group that works harder, not the group that's talented and gifted. I
worry about the ones who are never told they are talented and gifted
when, in fact, we know that they are. I worry about the kids who are
shunted and stunted because, I think, deep within them is the
opportunity to really change the world. So, I want every kid to have a
seat at the table and, dammit, if no one is going to come and make us
this table, we figured out here in the South Bronx how to build our own
table and set it ourselves. And that's something everybody can do.
Students now learn all about growing and managing produce. (Photo: Lizette Ritz/Green Bronx Machine) The kids you are talking about and the ones you taught
were put in classes called 'special education.' That term didn't sit
well with you. Why? They should call it unique, because everybody is unique. There is
this whole notion of diversity. Let's move beyond that and call it
inclusive. It's one thing to say you are going to listen to someone.
It's a whole other thing to get up and go to another group and ask
someone from that group to dance with you to their music and to embrace
them. Everybody deserves a seat at the table. And the beautiful thing
about what I learned, remarkably about this whole green plant
revolution, is that some of the most tedious jobs are so well done by
those who are traditionally excluded. And they can make a living wage in
the process. How beautiful is that?
The daffodil incident was your introduction to plants and
the life-changing moment that led to your green curriculum and to the
Green Bronx Machine. It's such a great story. Describe what happened. The biggest thing about when they arrived was that when you get
called to the principal's office, you think you're getting something
good. I'm the oldest sixth grader in the world, and I get excited
easily. So, they called, and I get this big box. I have 17 kids who are
about as disconnected from school as disconnected can be, and I see this
box and open it up. I'm thinking, "Wow! This is the moment I have been
waiting for." Then I open it up and see … onions. It could not have been
more disappointing! I had come running out of the principal's office
like a kid on Christmas morning. I didn't even get back to my room. I
opened the box in the hallway, I was so excited. It was the worst
Christmas ever. I got to the classroom, threw the box on a windowsill
behind the radiator and forgot about it.
Then, six weeks later, I got the biggest surprise in the world
when I thought my career was really going out the window. I saw a male
student grabbing something I thought was a weapon. I thought he was
going to do something awful to the girl student because she was about to
pummel this annoying kid to death. Then to see she was about to be
cold-cocked by flowers waving in her face! It was like Ferdinand and the
Bull! It was amazing! The world would be a better place if more adults
read more children's books. ("The Story of Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf is a
classic children's book known for its message of nonviolence and
pacifism.)
Obviously, you didn't know anything about plants before
that incident. After all, you thought the daffodil bulbs were onions.
Just how transformational was that moment? Well, that's the power of a plant. That's the beauty of a seed
and its genetic potential. My job is to make sure all my students, all
my colleagues and my community members reach their God-given genetic
potential. And the flip side now is going back 10 years later, I still
marvel. My kids this morning picked $38.52 worth of vegetables from the
garden outside of school. We priced them out today. If I can put a
little seed in the ground and get something out of it … I mean we've got
an 8-foot-tall tomato plant growing in front of the school. It was a
seedling 60 days ago. We've got corn growing in the middle of the South
Bronx. It's awesome sauce! When you can put a tomato seed in the ground
and get an 8-foot-tall plant out of it, that is my definition of awesome
sauce.
The Green Bronx Machine isn't an after-school activity for
students. It's part of the common core and content area instruction that
has helped the students improve test scores and eating habits. (Photo:
Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Could you talk about how the children you inspired became the seeds that grew into the Green Bronx Machine? We are, like most things, an evolutionary organism. We started as
an innovative program for over-aged, under-credited, disconnected
youths that's now become a way of life for everybody. We believe that
the art and science of growing vegetables align to common core and
content area instruction that has helped the students, helped the
schools and has helped the communities as evidenced by test scores,
eating habits and school performance. We grow vegetables, but my
vegetables grow students and healthy communities.
How is The Green Bronx Machine different from other
school garden programs, such as the national Farm to School program, the
Captain Planet Foundation and The Kitchen Community that Kimbal Musk
founded? We are very different. I'm not saying better. And I'm not saying
this with any judgment, but I do not want to be an after-school program.
I love Captain Planet. Don't get me wrong. I love a lot of those
organizations, but we believe in the art and science of growing
vegetables indoors on a daily basis. They are an after-school enrichment
program for kids who opt in. We are a whole school program. We believe
that the art and science of growing vegetables aligns the content area
instruction across all subject matter and that science forms academic
performance through personal behaviors. And that is what this is all
about.
Communities that are marginalized, that are suffering from hunger
and are hurting really need to re-address every single thing they are
doing if they want to transform their communities. You can’t transform a
community with 40 minutes twice a week after school. You've got to
transform pedagogies, you've got to transform instruction, you've got to
transform culture, you've got to transform schools from the top down
and the bottom up and be mindful that input equals output. What you put
in will determine what you get out.
What we need to put in is quality educational instruction along
with healthy food. Children never will be well read if they are not well
fed. You can't teach your children to read and do things they've never
done before and get excited about the world when they are hopped up on
95 grams of sugar, 300 milligrams of caffeine and having a toxic
reaction to a bag of sodium-laced potato chips. So, I am not the garden
guy! I'm the whole school guy. I just happened to get there by growing
lots of vegetables, and I do it indoors using 90 percent less water and
90 percent less space regardless of seasonality. I have children who
read the plants to get my reading data. We have a reading the plants
program! We do math. We do science. We do essays. We do all that stuff
around plants, and the coolest thing is that in 30 days we get to eat
them, too!
Even though it's mostly an indoor activity now, the Green Bronx
Machine garden started outdoors. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx
Machine)
How did the gardens move from school grounds, residential
streets and even a roof top to a signature indoor garden that's been
replicated in the U.S. Botanic Garden? Everything that I wound up doing outdoors I learned how to do
indoors. And now I'm doing it indoors to the tune of about 5,000 schools
across America. The early part of the book is about over-aged,
under-credited children … the forgotten youth, the disconnected youth. I
had an epiphany a few years later when I ballooned myself to more than
300 pounds that it's easier to raise healthy children than it is to fix
broken men. So, I wanted to take everything I was doing outside with
outdoors gardens indoors. Now, we still have outdoor gardens. In fact,
we have one that is going to be generating 5,000 pounds of food for
cancer patients here in the Bronx that the children love tending to. I
love seeing children playing in the dirt and getting dirty. I love
seeing children have a water fight, but not when I'm the school
principal! Not when I'm worried about academic performance and not when
I'm worried about how my children are going to be prepared for college
careers.
So, what I wanted to do was take all the outdoors success and
turn it into indoor, project-based learning that translates into
day-to-day academic goals and progress and good solid pedagogy. Not
everybody wants to run a farm. And not everybody wants to build a green
wall. So, I started zeroing in on replicable, scalable world-course
portable technology. And, believe it or not, now I go from a box to a
garden in 45 minutes if you are a man and 15 minutes if you are a woman —
because the women watch the video and read the instructions. That's one
classroom period, and there's no roof to climb and no trains they are
waiting on to arrive. And now we're in a process where we grow over 100
bags of groceries a week indoors. And the coolest thing is that the
little guys — the elementary school kids — are doing it. They even
marched down to the principal's office and got chocolate banned from the
cafeteria. They're taking on their parents. They're taking vegetables
home and telling their parents how to use them, and how to cook them and
why they should be eating them.
Why plants? What is it about plants that resonates so powerfully with children? The cool thing about plants is that unlike animals, there is no
poop to scoop. That's No 1. Then, there's nothing that eats their young,
and there are no floaters at the top of the tank. Mostly if you know
what you are doing with plants — and even if you don't — the plants will
survive despite the children's best attempts to kill them. You let the
children water them and talk to them and everything is an attempt to get
to "Yes!"
They get excited about seeing things grow. They understand that
living things in the world don’t necessarily have to fight or eat each
other and that plants give off oxygen and can smell good and look
pretty. That’s an awesome thing! You put a plant or a flower in a kid’s
hand and they change. You can’t fight plants. You can’t have two plants
fighting each other. I mean, there’s some interesting basic
environmental relationships like basic species and other stuff. But, for
the most part, kids get really excited about watering plants, tending
to them and taking care of them. Inherently it’s very easy for them to
succeed with that. For children who have never succeeded, succeeding in
nature is absolutely critical.
Ritz has presented the work of Green Bronx Machine at the White
House multiple times. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Who is your audience? Who do you want to reach with this book? I want to reach parents. I want to reach educators and inspire
them. I want them to know that, look, I have gotten myself into the
middle of something I never expected and it's impacted lives beyond any
scale of my imagination. And that happened simply because I showed up, I
stayed positive and I developed hard muscles on the back of my
buttocks, which means I bounce back up pretty quickly. I have failed a
lot, but failure hasn't defined me. It's helped shape me into being
relentlessly entrepreneurial.
I want to inspire students. I want to give credence to the
students who stuck by me all these years and thank all the grandparents
and foster parents and wonderful people in marginalized communities,
people who have been long forgotten. I want everyone to know that
absolutely anything is possible. And I want to respect farmers. So, the
book is written for everybody who just wanted some inspiration,
perspiration, dedication and a simple blueprint to follow.
What advice would you give to parents, educators or
others who might want to use plants to change the culture of their
schools but are afraid to take the risks you did? If I can, you can. We all can. We are Amer-I-CANS. African
Amer-I-CANS. Mex-I-CANS. Domin-I-CANS. South Amer-I-CANS. Nobody's
raising cans unless you choose to. The time to do nothing is never. We
are the ones we are waiting for. If it wasn't for people who took bold
steps before us, where would we be today? We'd still be banging rocks in
caves.
How transferable is what you've done in the South Bronx
to other schools, corporations or even personal relationships anywhere
in America? The book is about relentless optimism, passion, purpose and hope.
All of these are absolutely transferable. This is what keeps us going.
Unless you just want to sit around and have a cold rhetoric. That's
going to get you nowhere. So, passion, purpose and hope are absolutely
replicable. They are absolutely scalable. I got up on stage and told
people culture eats strategy for breakfast. And here I am. I get to go
and consult around the world now with Fortune 100 companies, to 50 firms
where people wouldn't have let me in the door 10 years ago. Now they
invite me in, and I get to take their money and give it to children.
It's so cool.
Ritz's classroom and been a local, national and international inspiration. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Where do you go from here? I don't know, but I'll be doing it in my cheese hat and bow tie!
[Ritz’s students gave him many nicknames, one of which was Big Cheese.
While in Wisconsin to speak at a green conference, he spotted a cheese
hat in the Madison airport gift shop and knew he had to have it. "That
goofy hat became my instant trademark," Ritz wrote in his book.]
To think that four years ago when I came up with this notion of
putting tower gardens in schools and people thought I was insane. To
think that we're now in 5,000 schools. To think that I have spread this
mission across Canada. That I built out the National Health, Wellness
and Learning Center in a 100-year-old building in the poorest
congressional district in America, in the lowest-performing school
district in America, in formerly in the lowest-performing school within
that district and it is now being replicated around the world and in
Dubai, that to me is pretty inspirational. That school is CS 55,
Community School 55, which, when I arrived here, was Public School 55
and was slated to be closed.
[When the five-story school was built more than 100 years ago,
the area was single-family homes and farms. Today, it is in a
neighborhood called Claremont Village and is surrounded by towering
housing projects. The nearest subway stop is 18 blocks away. "The
forty-five thousand residents of this dense neighborhood are so cut off
from the rest of New York, they might as well be living on their own
island," Ritz wrote. “At CS 55, 100 percent of students are on free and
reduced lunch. Across the community, 37.9 percent of residents are food
insecure, lacking access to affordable nutrition."]
But I had this little vision. I was a Top 10 finalist for the
Global Teacher Prize. I took that $25,000 prize money and donated it
here and built something that is now being replicated all around the
world. Think about this … in this classroom I am speaking from, four
stories up in one of the most God-forsaken buildings in one of the most
maligned communities in the world, we've had people from more than 60
countries and six continents come to the South Bronx and visit this
classroom. Just this June, we had the global teacher prize winner from
China come here. We're actually going to replicate this classroom in the
Arctic tundra as well as in the middle of the Dubai sands! How cool is
that?
Now I want to get to seven continents. If anyone reading this
article knows anyone in Antarctica, please contact me! I'd like to have
all seven continents come visit this class because I want to get into
the Guinness Book of Records with seven continents represented in this
classroom.
Is there anything we haven't talked about that you would like the Mother Nature Network audience to know? Well, what I would like for them to know is that the book comes
with a double-your-money back guarantee. If you buy the book and you
don't like it, I am willing to buy it back from you for double the
price. Hopefully, that will encourage people to buy the book. Proceeds
from the book are going to support the Green Bronx Machine. Realize that
this is an all-volunteer organization. We have a massive following on Facebook,
so I would love for people to check us out on Facebook. Like the
website. If they want to make a donation, that's great. But, most
importantly, make epic happen. Get out there and grow something great
and get up every day and say, "See this plant."
In a time of global crisis, I want everyone to act like an
immigrant. And what do immigrants do? They get to some foreign land,
they spot an opportunity and they work like artisans to make epic
happen. So, spot that opportunity, make it unique and make it individual
and grow something great. That's what this is all about. We have gone
from hope to the pope and from our greenhouse to the White House. To
think that there is a model of my classroom in the U.S. Botanic Garden,
it's mind-numbing. I didn't even know what I was doing. So, there's hope
for everybody.
Ritz is available on a number of social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram. He also asked that we make his email address available, so you can email him at sritz@schools@nyc.gov.
Stephen Ritz is the founder of Green Bronx Machine, an organization that started in the South Bronx that teaches kids to grow their own healthy food. Together, Stephen and his students have grown 40,000 pounds of vegetables, but he enthusiastically insists his favorite crops include healthy students, high-performing schools, graduates, registered voters, living wage jobs and members of the middle class.
Stephen hopes the Green Bronx Machine movement can inspire similar transformations across the world!
Listen to this episode on the following platforms: iTunes | Stitcher |Google Play Get Stephen Ritz’s book Power of a Plant, here
For the sake of keeping things manageable, let’s confine the
discussion to a single continent and a single week: North America over
the last seven days. In Houston they got down to the hard and unromantic work of recovery from what economists announced was probably the most expensive storm in US history,
and which weather analysts confirmed was certainly the greatest
rainfall event ever measured in the country – across much of its spread
it was a once-in-25,000-years storm, meaning 12 times past the birth of
Christ; in isolated spots it was a once-in-500,000-years storm, which
means back when we lived in trees. Meanwhile, San Francisco not only
beat its all-time high temperature record,
it crushed it by 3F, which should be pretty much statistically
impossible in a place with 150 years (that’s 55,000 days) of
record-keeping. Floods in drought season: is this the future for parts of India?
Raghu Karnad
Read more... That same hot weather broke records up and down the west coast, except in those places where a pall of smoke from immense forest fires
kept the sun shaded – after a forest fire somehow managed to jump the
mighty Columbia river from Oregon into Washington, residents of the
Pacific Northwest reported that the ash was falling so thickly from the
skies that it reminded them of the day Mount St Helens erupted in 1980.
That same heat, just a little farther inland, was causing a “flash drought”
across the country’s wheat belt of North Dakota and Montana – the
evaporation from record temperatures had shrivelled grain on the stalk
to the point where some farmers weren’t bothering to harvest at all. In
the Atlantic, of course, Irma
was barrelling across the islands of the Caribbean (“It’s like someone
with a lawnmower from the sky has gone over the island,” said one
astounded resident of St Maarten). The storm, the first category five to
hit Cuba in a hundred years, is currently battering the west coast of Florida after
setting a record for the lowest barometric pressure ever measured in
the Keys, and could easily break the 10-day-old record for economic
catastrophe set by Harvey; it’s definitely changed the psychology of
life in Florida for decades to come.
Oh, and while Irma spun, Hurricane Jose
followed in its wake as a major hurricane, while in the Gulf of Mexico,
Katia spun up into a frightening storm of her own, before crashing into
the Mexican mainland almost directly across the peninsula from the spot
where the strongest earthquake in 100 years had taken dozens of lives.
Leaving aside the earthquake, every one of these events jibes with
what scientists and environmentalists have spent 30 fruitless years
telling us to expect from global warming. (There’s actually fairly
convincing evidence that climate change is triggering more seismic activity, but there’s no need to egg the pudding.)
That one long screed of news from one continent in one week (which
could be written about many other continents and many other weeks – just
check out the recent flooding in south Asia for instance) is a precise,
pixelated portrait of a heating world. Because we have burned so much
oil and gas and coal, we have put huge clouds of CO2 and
methane in the air; because the structure of those molecules traps heat
the planet has warmed; because the planet has warmed we can get heavier
rainfalls, stronger winds, drier forests and fields. It’s not
mysterious, not in any way. It’s not a run of bad luck. It’s not Donald
Trump (though he’s obviously not helping). It’s not hellfire sent to
punish us. It’s physics.
Maybe it was too much to expect that scientists’ warnings would really move people. (I mean, I wrote The End of Nature,
the first book about all this 28 years ago this week, when I was 28 –
and when my theory was still: “People will read my book, and then they
will change.”) Maybe it’s like all the health warnings that you should
eat fewer chips and drink less soda, which, to judge by belt-size, not
many of us pay much mind. Until, maybe, you go to the doctor and he
says: “Whoa, you’re in trouble.” Not “keep eating junk and some day
you’ll be in trouble”, but: “You’re in trouble right now, today. As in,
it looks to me like you’ve already had a small stroke or two.”
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are the equivalent of one of those transient ischaemic attacks
– yeah, your face is drooping oddly on the left, but you can continue.
Maybe. If you start taking your pills, eating right, exercising, getting
your act together.
1:50 Hurricane Irma's path of destruction - video report
That’s the stage we’re at now – not the warning on the side of the
pack, but the hacking cough that brings up blood. But what happens if
you keep smoking? You get worse, till past a certain point you’re not
continuing. We’ve increased the temperature of the Earth a little more
than 1C so far, which has been enough extra heat to account for the
horrors we’re currently witnessing. And with the momentum built into the
system, we’re going to go somewhere near 2C, no matter what we do. That
will be considerably worse than where we are now, but maybe it will be
expensively endurable.
The problem is, our current business-as-usual trajectory takes us to a
world that’s about 3.5C warmer. That is to say, even if we kept the
promises we made at Paris (which Trump has already, of course,
repudiated) we’re going to build a planet so hot that we can’t have
civilisations. We have to seize the moment we’re in right now – the
moment when we’re scared and vulnerable – and use it to dramatically
reorient ourselves. The last three years have each broken the record for
the hottest year ever measured – they’re a red flashing sign that says:
“Snap out of it.” Not bend the trajectory somewhat, as the Paris
accords envisioned, but simultaneously jam on the fossil fuel brakes and
stand on the solar accelerator (and also find some metaphors that don’t
rely on internal combustion).
This is a race against time. Global warming is a crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. We could do it. It’s not technologically impossible – study after
study has shown we can get to 100% renewables at a manageable cost, more
manageable all the time, since the price of solar panels and windmills
keeps plummeting. Elon Musk is showing you can churn out electric cars
with ever-lower sticker shock.
In remote corners of Africa and Asia, peasants have begun leapfrogging
past fossil fuel and going straight to the sun. The Danes just sold
their last oil company and used the cash to build more windmills. There
are just enough examples to make despair seem like the cowardly dodge it
is. But everyone everywhere would have to move with similar speed,
because this is in fact a race against time. Global warming is the first
crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it.
Winning slowly is just a different way of losing.
Winning fast enough to matter would mean, above all, standing up to
the fossil fuel industry, so far the most powerful force on Earth. It
would mean postponing other human enterprises and diverting other
spending. That is, it would mean going on a war-like footing: not
shooting at enemies, but focusing in the way that peoples and nations
usually only focus when someone’s shooting at them. And something is.
What do you think it means when your forests are on fire, your streets
are underwater, and your buildings are collapsing? • Bill McKibben is a writer and the founder of the climate campaign 350.org
A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton
August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Friends,
Tens of thousands of
Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to
thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often
beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my
home, my spirit, and my determination.
Unfortunately my treatment
has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner
Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.
I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.
I
recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the
New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our
new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and
our program, and move forward towards the next election. A few additional thought:
To
other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their
lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey
hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope.
Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this
disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused
on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with
those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this
summer. To the members of my party: we’ve done
remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a
privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for
your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer
commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will
try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger
than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and
determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice,
universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left
behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything
we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved
Canada as its next government. To the members of our parliamentary caucus:
I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our
caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my
role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again.
Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come.
Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our
party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and
solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in
the recent election. To my fellow Quebecers: On
May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to
replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better
was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians
across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the
right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to
the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a
superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing
remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for
us all. To young Canadians: All my life I have
worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my
political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about
Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I
have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your
frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging
in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of
you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life
draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to
change this country and this world. There are great challenges before
you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of
an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the
changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I
believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are
exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of
our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the
future. And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a
great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a
country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a
prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly.
We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our
children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can
restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things
because we finally have a party system at the national level where there
are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can
actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New
Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in
our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful
hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a
better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them
tell you it can’t be done.
My friends, love is better than anger.
Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be
loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
All my very best,
Ritz seeks to be a mentor and role model to his students. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Students now learn all about growing and managing produce. (Photo: Lizette Ritz/Green Bronx Machine)
The Green Bronx Machine isn't an after-school activity for
students. It's part of the common core and content area instruction that
has helped the students improve test scores and eating habits. (Photo:
Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Even though it's mostly an indoor activity now, the Green Bronx
Machine garden started outdoors. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx
Machine)
Ritz has presented the work of Green Bronx Machine at the White
House multiple times. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Ritz's classroom and been a local, national and international inspiration. (Photo: Jesse McElwain/Green Bronx Machine)
Flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, southeast Texas 31 August 2017. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images.
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For the sake of keeping things manageable, let’s confine the discussion to a single continent and a single week: North America over the last seven days. In Houston they got down to the hard and unromantic work of recovery from what economists announced was probably the most expensive storm in US history, and which weather analysts confirmed was certainly the greatest rainfall event ever measured in the country – across much of its spread it was a once-in-25,000-years storm, meaning 12 times past the birth of Christ; in isolated spots it was a once-in-500,000-years storm, which means back when we lived in trees. Meanwhile, San Francisco not only beat its all-time high temperature record, it crushed it by 3F, which should be pretty much statistically impossible in a place with 150 years (that’s 55,000 days) of record-keeping.
Floods in drought season: is this the future for parts of India?
Raghu Karnad
Read more... That same hot weather broke records up and down the west coast, except in those places where a pall of smoke from immense forest fires kept the sun shaded – after a forest fire somehow managed to jump the mighty Columbia river from Oregon into Washington, residents of the Pacific Northwest reported that the ash was falling so thickly from the skies that it reminded them of the day Mount St Helens erupted in 1980.
That same heat, just a little farther inland, was causing a “flash drought” across the country’s wheat belt of North Dakota and Montana – the evaporation from record temperatures had shrivelled grain on the stalk to the point where some farmers weren’t bothering to harvest at all. In the Atlantic, of course, Irma was barrelling across the islands of the Caribbean (“It’s like someone with a lawnmower from the sky has gone over the island,” said one astounded resident of St Maarten). The storm, the first category five to hit Cuba in a hundred years, is currently battering the west coast of Florida after setting a record for the lowest barometric pressure ever measured in the Keys, and could easily break the 10-day-old record for economic catastrophe set by Harvey; it’s definitely changed the psychology of life in Florida for decades to come.
Oh, and while Irma spun, Hurricane Jose followed in its wake as a major hurricane, while in the Gulf of Mexico, Katia spun up into a frightening storm of her own, before crashing into the Mexican mainland almost directly across the peninsula from the spot where the strongest earthquake in 100 years had taken dozens of lives.
Leaving aside the earthquake, every one of these events jibes with what scientists and environmentalists have spent 30 fruitless years telling us to expect from global warming. (There’s actually fairly convincing evidence that climate change is triggering more seismic activity, but there’s no need to egg the pudding.)
That one long screed of news from one continent in one week (which could be written about many other continents and many other weeks – just check out the recent flooding in south Asia for instance) is a precise, pixelated portrait of a heating world. Because we have burned so much oil and gas and coal, we have put huge clouds of CO2 and methane in the air; because the structure of those molecules traps heat the planet has warmed; because the planet has warmed we can get heavier rainfalls, stronger winds, drier forests and fields. It’s not mysterious, not in any way. It’s not a run of bad luck. It’s not Donald Trump (though he’s obviously not helping). It’s not hellfire sent to punish us. It’s physics.
Maybe it was too much to expect that scientists’ warnings would really move people. (I mean, I wrote The End of Nature, the first book about all this 28 years ago this week, when I was 28 – and when my theory was still: “People will read my book, and then they will change.”) Maybe it’s like all the health warnings that you should eat fewer chips and drink less soda, which, to judge by belt-size, not many of us pay much mind. Until, maybe, you go to the doctor and he says: “Whoa, you’re in trouble.” Not “keep eating junk and some day you’ll be in trouble”, but: “You’re in trouble right now, today. As in, it looks to me like you’ve already had a small stroke or two.” Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are the equivalent of one of those transient ischaemic attacks – yeah, your face is drooping oddly on the left, but you can continue. Maybe. If you start taking your pills, eating right, exercising, getting your act together.
1:50 Hurricane Irma's path of destruction - video report
That’s the stage we’re at now – not the warning on the side of the pack, but the hacking cough that brings up blood. But what happens if you keep smoking? You get worse, till past a certain point you’re not continuing. We’ve increased the temperature of the Earth a little more than 1C so far, which has been enough extra heat to account for the horrors we’re currently witnessing. And with the momentum built into the system, we’re going to go somewhere near 2C, no matter what we do. That will be considerably worse than where we are now, but maybe it will be expensively endurable.
The problem is, our current business-as-usual trajectory takes us to a world that’s about 3.5C warmer. That is to say, even if we kept the promises we made at Paris (which Trump has already, of course, repudiated) we’re going to build a planet so hot that we can’t have civilisations. We have to seize the moment we’re in right now – the moment when we’re scared and vulnerable – and use it to dramatically reorient ourselves. The last three years have each broken the record for the hottest year ever measured – they’re a red flashing sign that says: “Snap out of it.” Not bend the trajectory somewhat, as the Paris accords envisioned, but simultaneously jam on the fossil fuel brakes and stand on the solar accelerator (and also find some metaphors that don’t rely on internal combustion).
This is a race against time. Global warming is a crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. We could do it. It’s not technologically impossible – study after study has shown we can get to 100% renewables at a manageable cost, more manageable all the time, since the price of solar panels and windmills keeps plummeting. Elon Musk is showing you can churn out electric cars with ever-lower sticker shock. In remote corners of Africa and Asia, peasants have begun leapfrogging past fossil fuel and going straight to the sun. The Danes just sold their last oil company and used the cash to build more windmills. There are just enough examples to make despair seem like the cowardly dodge it is. But everyone everywhere would have to move with similar speed, because this is in fact a race against time. Global warming is the first crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. Winning slowly is just a different way of losing.
Winning fast enough to matter would mean, above all, standing up to the fossil fuel industry, so far the most powerful force on Earth. It would mean postponing other human enterprises and diverting other spending. That is, it would mean going on a war-like footing: not shooting at enemies, but focusing in the way that peoples and nations usually only focus when someone’s shooting at them. And something is. What do you think it means when your forests are on fire, your streets are underwater, and your buildings are collapsing?
• Bill McKibben is a writer and the founder of the climate campaign 350.org